This Is It
by Bohemian Storm
Summary: Celebrating a birthday in Azkaba, Sirius Black reflects on what another year means for him.


**Disclaimer**:  I don't own the characters.

**Notes**:  This stemmed from a challenge between She's a Star, drama-princess and myself.  The requirements were to write a character centric piece about our favourite character, have them reflecting on something bad that they couldn't control and a galleon.  I do realize that mine jumps around a bit and can't compare to the results of the other two, but you will not believe the trouble this gave me.

**This Is It**

_By Bohemian Storm_

            So, this is it.  This is what it feels like to celebrate your twenty second birthday while locked in a tiny cell in Azkaban prison.  This is what it feels like to watch another year pass by, knowing that you don't belong where you are and that somewhere, someone who doesn't deserve freedom is drinking it in while looking forward to his own twenty second birthday in exactly three days.  This is what it's like to know that your life is going to be wasted in the exact same way that the past two years have been wasted.

I'll tell you exactly what I'll do rather than having myself a nice little birthday party with my best friends.  I'll sit here on the cold dirt floor and wish that I could actually sing happy birthday to myself.  That's right.  Cold _and_ dirty.  

Oh, and have I mentioned the Dementors?

            They hurt like nothing I've ever felt before.  I was so different before I came here.  I was alive, I was . . . well, more than slightly off the wall and I was happy.  Now I just feel cold all the time and I don't feel like I used to.  I feel dead inside sometimes and if it weren't for the anger I don't know if I would have lasted this long.

            I haven't cried about Lily and James yet.  Is that strange?  They don't actually seem gone yet.  I know that it's been two years and I know that they'll never be back, but they won't be gone for me until I see him alone.  I won't believe it until I see him without his parents and Merlin knows how long that will be.  The seconds tick by so slowly inside this place, inside my head, and I can't imagine spending another year inside these walls.  I know I will because there's no way out, but I can't wrap my mind around it yet.  I just can't.

            This is what it feels like to be a twenty two year old accused murderer with no future and no hope.  It's oddly depressing to this day, despite the fact that I've been here for so long already and should, by all accounts, be completely insane.  It bothers Crouch that I'm not completely lost to the world and I relish in it.  He put me away without a trial and I'll be here forever because of him.  

            The last time he was here on a security check, he flicked a galleon at me between the bars and watched in amusement as it bounced off my arm.  I think he expected some sort of reaction; a scream maybe, or even a confused blink.  He wasn't too impressed when I twirled it between my fingers and put it into my pocket without a word.

            Maybe I'll get out of here one day and maybe I'll return his money to him.  Or maybe I'll buy myself something nice with it.  It's only a galleon, but when one seems so willing to just throw away his money . . . I wonder what he thought he'd accomplish by that.  Does he take pleasure in throwing galleons on potentially crazy young murderers?

            Or perhaps, (and yes, here's a bit of the man I used to be), he likes tossing tips to dirty young men.  

            Or maybe I'll give it to Harry.  Maybe I'll tell him some beautiful story about his mother giving it to me as a gift on her deathbed and that she told me it had been in her family for as long as she could remember.  I'll tell him that just before she died, she told me that I had to keep it safe until I could pass it on to him because it had to stay in the family.  Maybe he'll believe me and maybe he won't.  

            I only want to have something beautiful to pass onto him about his mother and father, but because of Crouch, I have nothing.  I don't even have a best friend or a godson because of him.  All I have is the cold and the dirt and the Dementors.  

            There's so much blame to be laid and, as hard as I try some days, I can't find very much to place on myself.  There's always something that I can blame myself for; I should have tried harder, I should have fought longer, I should have moved faster.  I should have done something to prevent this from happening to my best friends, but for the things that have happened to me . . . I can't blame myself.  

            Crouch and Peter.  

            I can't even let my blame rise as high as Voldemort because Peter was our friend and he betrayed that.  Voldemort killed them and I hate him for it, but he didn't betray us.  He never pretended to love us like Peter did.  I don't have words for how I feel about Peter; my mouth can't form the words that explain just how much I hate him for what he did to James, Lily and myself.

            I'm here because of him.  I live with this cold inside of me every single day because of him.  I am locked behind bars with nothing but a single galleon in my pocket because of someone who claimed to be my friend.  My hate is the only part of me that feels alive sometimes.  It burns in my stomach.  He owns part of that hate, Peter does, and the rest of it belongs to Crouch.

            I want to see the look on his face when he finds out that he put an innocent man in Azkaban.  Maybe I really will hand his galleon back to him and ask what he'd do with it if he had had nothing else to hold onto but that.  A once shiny, now dirty and tarnished gold galleon is the only thing I can trust is real in this place.

            A single galleon; my life savings.  That's a sobering thought, if I ever had need for one.  I doubt I'll ever really be in need of a sobering thought for the rest of my life, though.  There isn't much left in my life to make me happy and pretty much all my thoughts are rather sobering.  I haven't remembered something to make me smile since I was put here.  I don't know if I've smiled once in the two years I've been in Azkaban, but what reason would I have to smile?  Give me a reason and perhaps I'll smile for you.  

            I don't remember how to smile.  

            I used to smile all the time.  My professors at Hogwarts hated me because they could never get me to stop smiling and they said I always looked like I was causing some sort of trouble somewhere in the school.  I used to love the feeling of smiling and laughing, but they took it all away.

            They left me with nothing.  

            So now, because of them, this is it.  This is what I'll do for the rest of my life, however short it may be.  If the Dementors can't kill me, I might do it myself.  All I have left to do is sit and simmer in my anger.  I can remember things that made me happy once, only to realize that they've been stolen from me.  So, I'll sit and I'll think about all the things that I'm going to miss out on.  I'll sit and I'll realize what I'm losing and my anger won't go away.  It'll intensify, but I won't be able to do anything but sit here and think about it.

            So, this is it.  This is the beginning of the rest of my life.

End  


End file.
